


songs for those left behind

by NoFootprintsInSand



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Darkish Poe Dameron, Dominant Poe Dameron, F/M, First Time, Getting to Know Each Other, Older Man/Younger Woman, PTSD, Past Rey/Ben Solo, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, dealing with grief
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-07
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26345872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoFootprintsInSand/pseuds/NoFootprintsInSand
Summary: They celebrate.Then they break.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 20
Kudos: 55





	1. 1

* * *

**songs for those left behind**

**chapter 1**

* * *

They celebrate.

Then, then they break.

* * *

They, the fighters, the rebels, they start to leave. Back to their home worlds, back to their lives. Children and lovers and work and dreams.

She’s got nothing of that.

Well, not quite true. She’s got dreams. Ben is in all of them. So she tries not to sleep. Or think. Or let her mind wander off on its own.

Oh, it _hurts_. It all hurts.

* * *

Finn leaves first.

Soft smile on his lips, warm eyes brimming with adventure and joy. So much to live for, has Finn. Freedom. A whole galaxy to traverse. Rose, Rose by his side. Sweet, round-cheeked Rose with her fierce competence and stubborn bravery.

( _Rey will never ever admit it but she is so jealous of what they have that she could scream, just scream her lungs to bloody ribbons)_

Out of all of them Finn will travel the furthest, she knows. He will walk on stars and he will shine and sing just as brightly as them. Finn is light. Finn is goodness, so pure that he could overcome the First Order’s conditioning all on his own.

Secretly, she thinks that Finn is her buoy to the light and without him she’ll become unmoored, adrift, lost on a sea of greys and blacks.

When she hugs Finn goodbye she doesn’t cry, and when he promises to come back soon she pretends to believe him. 

When she promises to wait for him he _does_ believe her.

“Go and find... _everything_. Everything you want, everything you deserve,” she tells him, tells them both, and she smiles so widely she thinks her face will crack and shatter. 

Leave just a grinning skull. 

* * *

Lando and Chewie next. They take Jannah with them. And the droids. 3-CP0 and R2. Old friends and one new one, off, off on adventures and discovery. 

She spends the entire day after they’ve left in one of the Falcon’s med bunks, wrapped around herself, wishing she could burrow into Chewie’s fur and cry.

But there are no tears. And no Chewie.

* * *

She flees into the jungle.

It seems to mock her sorrow with its beauty. It’s humid and damp, yes, and she’s unused to it, struggling with it still, desert child as she is. But there are so many shades of green that she’s long since lost count, there are sun dapples and birds gleaming like pomegranate seeds, like _jewels_.

But she doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be curled on the sharp rocks of Exegol, where Ben smiled at her

(he _smiled_ )

before he slipped through her fingers and vanished.

Yes, she wants to be where her love died. She wants that dark, cruel rock against her ribs and spine and tongue. She wants it deep in her wide open eyes. She wants to sleep forever in the spot where he disappeared. 

But she’s too crippled to leave here. She’s too splintered to meditate. She is terrified of the way sorrow has changed her, _is_ changing her, how it has bound her, but she is unable to do anything about it.

All she can do is _feel_ , and that’s an awful thing, a rending thing; to be wide open like this. Because now, when the adrenaline has burnt out and she no longer fears for her life at every turn of her neck, she starts noticing the void inside her. Where Ben had warmed her. Where Kylo had raged. 

_(“the power of life itself”)_

Now that void screams with emptiness, now she is a half. And as she walks aimlessly through the jungle she finds herself probing the hole inside of her, like a tongue against a broken tooth. 

He has not been ripped from her cleanly, that much is certain. The edges of his absence are ragged and uneven, raw and torn. She ought to fear for gangrene, but she can’t.

Because the gangrene would be from _him_.

She walks the forest aimlessly instead, and she refuses to acknowledge the colours around her.

It would be a betrayal.

* * *

She comes back to the base after several days lost in the jungle, several days of not seeing greens and blues and red and golds, and she discovers that it’s now entirely abandoned. 

Everyone has left.

She walks empty, echoing hallways, circles the old mess hall, the cramped living quarters. Dust is already beginning to settle, and all equipment not nailed down is gone. Soon, she thinks, soon the jungle will move in again. Vines will entwine the old consoles, ferns and orchids cling to rusted bunks, roots push through the floor, and it will be like they were never even here.

She quite likes that. She likes the forlorn, left-behind atmosphere of the place, the ashes and the whispers, and she thinks she might stay a little longer. Watch nature reclaim this place, perhaps sit still long enough that it might claim her too.

Then, then she senses a life force, strong and unmistakable.

Someone is still here. 

She walks through the base, out towards the back, where all the ships stood parked back when there was a war being waged. Now, there is only the Falcon.

And a tatted X-wing.

Beyond, in a clearing just before the treeline, there burns a small fire. She knows before she can see his face who it is, the signature familiar and unmistakable. 

She hesitates, then sighs and walks over, sits down on the other side of the fire from him. Studies him, _really_ studies him, perhaps for the first time ever.

Some of the brashness has been burnt from Poe, but his eyes still flash, his curls still move with impatience, restlessness. That could never change. Perhaps, she thinks, after all this he is wiser, but mostly he looks sadder.

Older.

There’s a certain new hardness to him as well. His face is covered with stubble but his jawline cuts through it all, sharp, so sharp, she might graze herself on him, his face, the way he bares his teeth when he thinks she isn’t looking. 

Slightly behind him sits the round little droid, powered down for the night. She smiles a little when she sees it.

“Why are you still here?” she finally asks, even though she thinks she knows. “I thought everyone had left.”

He doesn’t answer, simply stirs the fire with a stick. It throws up embers reflecting in his eyes, and his jaw is tight, so tight she might burst with the tension of it. She wants to stroke along that knife edge of him, soothe it, but she’s pretty sure he’ll lash out. Draw blood.

So she stays on her side of the fire. 

It’s easier that way.

“I would’ve thought you’d leave with Finn and Rose,” she tries again, but makes no justification for not even noticing that he hadn’t gone with them. What would be the point?

“I would have been in the way,” he says shortly, not looking at her. And she can understand that, about being in the way, because she feels the same. But it’s not the reason for staying behind.

For either of them.

“And,” he continues. “I can’t quite leave yet. I can’t. It...she...she was _here_.”

Leia. Rey had been close to her, so very close, but so had Poe in a different way, and she understands suddenly that just like her he is paralysed, unable to move. Doesn’t _want_ to move. To leave this moon would be to take the first step towards moving _on,_ and that would feel like too great a betrayal. 

He looks at her then, and his eyes are unreadable. Unreadable and hard.

“How about you? Why are _you_ still here, Rey?”

She realises then that she has never really told anyone. She had never told Finn, and she had certainly never told Poe. Leia knew some of it of course, and Luke, but Leia and Luke are both gone. No one alive knows of her and Ben. Not really. 

She can’t bear that. 

Someone should know. Someone.

“Me and Ben...Ren,” she amends at his look, “we were bound. In the Force, we were bound in the Force. We could feel each other. See each other. Reach out for each other. Touch each other.”

She still doesn’t cry.

“We were _one_. With him gone I’m half.”

“He was a monster. Responsible for countless deaths.”

His voice is so low. A rumble, a growl. She can feel it in her teeth. And he’s right, of course. Kylo Ren had tortured Poe mercilessly, Kylo Ren was responsible for atrocities wildly beyond her ken.

And Ben Solo has given his life for hers.

She can never ever reconcile those two guises of his. How then can she expect someone else to? But she doesn’t feel like being fair; she hurts too much for that.

“You don't understand,” she says quietly, bitterly. “How can you ever understand a loss like _that_?”

And there’s that flash of teeth again, a snarl, and now he doesn’t care if she sees or not. In fact, she feels sure that he wants her to.

“You don’t get to tell me what I do or do not understand. You don’t get to compare one loss to another. I don’t care about your Jedi wisdom. In this you are nothing but a _silly_ little girl.”

She rears a little, blindsided by the venom in his voice, the shining, forthright anger; she can only look at him in choking silence.

They have always been...sharp with each other. Their edges don't quite fit together right. It had been Finn who had gentled them, who had been the piece between them that they had slotted into. But Finn is no longer here, and now the old tension between them moves to the fore.

And she wants to be furious with him. She wants to scream and shout and hurl him clean across the clearing and into a tree. 

But that wouldn’t take away the fact that he is right, and the way all air suddenly leaves her is painful. It hurts to deflate.

“I know,” she agrees, her voice thin and frail, here, where it’s just the two of them, when they don’t have to be Resistance commanders but just _people_. “I have no right.”

He shakes his head at her, then lays down on the other side of the fire with his back to her.

“Go to sleep, Rey.”

She obeys in so far that she curls up in her cloak. But her eyes remain wide open to the fire, her mind doing peculiar things, jumping and spiralling and falling at light speed.

They are both brave, aren’t they, they are both fucking _heroes_. 

But they both are too cowardly to face their futures.

And it seems they handle grief in different ways. Mostly ugly ones.

He’s _angry_. She’s _inside_.

* * *

They both want to be alone but they both feel unable to leave. It’s a large place, and even though she can disappear into the jungle for days at a time it still seems too small to hold both of their grief.

She’s unsure of the time passing, but his stubble becomes a beard, his hair grows even wilder around his ears. He is wont to pace, always so hard for him to be still, too much kinetic energy seeping from him that he almost burns with it.

She doesn’t know what she herself looks like any more, because she is refusing reflections.

Maybe a few standard weeks have passed? She can’t be sure, but she can tell that soon the rains will come. She can smell it on the warm air, feel the rush in trees and moss and flowers all around her, how this change in season is hurtling unapologetically towards them, brash and exultant. All the animals moving to higher ground, all the movement, all the energy.

She realises something else about him as she studies him from in among the trees.

It is not only grief keeping him in place, it’s also a lack of purpose. He’s spent years with the Resistance, he laid down his life; brave, fierce Poe, always headlong into danger and fights. And now his life has been handed back to him intact, and there is nothing left to do. The galaxy is free, and Poe can’t think of his new place in it.

What a mess, she thinks, as she wanders beneath trees taller than life, BB-8 rolling by her side, chirping despondently because it doesn’t know if it should be with her or with Poe.

They avoid each other during the days, but by some unspoken agreement they sleep on opposite sides of the same fire at night.

It is of course an untenable status quo.

He finds her inside the base one day, tinkering with old abandoned electronics for want of something to do, just to keep her hands occupied, her mind still.

“Rey,” he says behind her, and his voice is unusually soft around her name, tactile enough on the syllables that she turns to face him.

He’s looking at her head, and she realises then that her lower bun has come undone, that a large section of her fair is falling between the fragile wings of her shoulder blades. It might have been that way for days, she’s not sure. She hadn’t noticed before, and she can’t bring herself to care now.

“Rey,” he says again, some kind of entreaty in his voice, and she remembers suddenly that he is a kind man, a friend, even though their lines have never fitted right, never slotted into each other as they ought.

“What is it, Poe?” she asks and puts the circuit board back down.

“You need...you have to…” He takes a breath, eyes soft and hard at the same time, how does he _do_ that? and then he begins anew. “You’re fading,” he says simply.

And yes, maybe she is. Her contours are certainly sharper, the skin over her bones tighter, her skin increasingly transparent, but she doesn’t want to look at that, at herself.

“And you’re a mess,” she says cruelly, suddenly desperate to divert attention, desperate not to be flayed open.

“He’s not worth it. He never was.”

Oh, but Poe won’t let her 

She is across the floor faster than she can ever remember moving, and she swings at him. She slaps him as hard as she can, the sound of it a sharp, vicious echo around the empty base, and his head jerks back with the force.

She’s going in for a second blow when he moves. 

And she reminded, suddenly and quite brutally, that for all that he is a hothead with a fast mouth and an even quicker grin, he is more so a soldier with a shady past, a warrior always fighting to win, and a man with some darkness behind that wide smile.

And he’s certainly got her beat in hand to hand combat.

She could use the Force, sure, but even in her frenzy she realises that it wouldn’t be fair, and without that advantage he’s simply heavier than her, taller than her, and he’s got many years of experience beyond hers. 

Fights dirty, too, she thinks as he wrests her backwards, and follows her down, two thick thighs on either side of her waist, his strong hands encircling her wrists. Dirtier even than a scrappy desert rat like her. 

Yes, he’s so close to her now that she can see all the grey in his hair, his beard. Lines around his eyes and mouth but his eyes burn with fury, so hot his irises shimmers with it, like mirages in the desert.

“Don’t you ever,” he begins, his breath hot against her collarbone, “ _ever_ lash out at me again. Ever. Do you understand?”

He shakes her a little, grief and natural inclination making him rough, and she deflates at the same time as she wants to lean into the movement. Because his solidness so close against her...it’s real and alive and warm.

It’s...it’s nice. It feels like _life_. She wants to rub herself against it like a feline, this almost tangible thing hovering on the air between them.

“I won’t,” she whispers, and she wants to stroke his brow to hammer the apology home, but he won’t let go of her wrists. “I’m sorry, Poe.”

He’s intent on her where he’s hovering above her, still holding her firmly down. He looks unsettled, ravaged, his breaths stuttering against hers. His eyes, they are searching, looking for something in hers that simply isn’t there. His thumb is stroking the inside of her wrist, almost obsessively, around and around, unwilling to let her go.

So she struggles upwards in his hold, up to meet him, press her forehead against his.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and she’s so close to him she can smell engine grease and fire and something dark green and woody.

His breath washes over her lips, her cheeks, her closed eyes. It...unlocks something inside her. Something that has been kept bound and still, asleep, something that has been keeping her _here_. It loosens up inside her, unfurls, and maybe she can finally move, maybe she can leave here now.

“Ok,” he says. “Ok.”

And he lets go of her wrists, sits up straighter, and one of his hands accidentally brushes over her breast, the one with her heart in it. She can’t help it, she’s never felt anything like that, and she moves into the touch, involuntary, breathless.

He sees, notices, and stiffens. The look he gives her as he stands and leaves is thoughtful and deeper than she can bear.

* * *

They are...closer...after all that. 

He looks at her like she might become something...something _more_ to him.

Something different. 

She averts her gaze.

They still don’t say much to each other but at night they sit on the same side of the fire. Their thighs touch and sometimes he smiles at her, sometimes he strokes her hair. 

Sometimes his hand linger, just a little, right by her temple, like he is trying to touch her mind, her thoughts. His fingers curl like he wants to make a bowl for her cheek to rest in. And it’s nice. It’s nice to feel another human against her skin while she sits here and works towards breaking out of stasis.

Leave.

So she leans into him more and more. Leans into his way of breathing, listens to the patterns his heart takes.

She learns him. And sometimes, sometimes as they sit there in silence it’s like their contours align and merge, shimmering into each other aided by starlight. 

But he is only human. He can’t be in her mind and she can’t be in his.

She can never have that again. 

He’s _not enough_.

And when they sit there, so close, that could almost break her heart.

* * *

The rains are almost here and so is the intangible deadline she hadn’t even realised that she’s imposed on herself. 

“I’m leaving in the morning,” she tells him one night as they stand by the fire, and the resonances in her voice and her closed stance and the bleakness she wears like a cloak tells him that she’s going alone.

Someone shifts on his face then, a ripple of a shadow, a flash of something… something…

She doesn’t know.

His eyes are dark but his teeth white as he gives her a smile like a broken piece of glass.

“Come here, then,” he says, and she hates the resignation on his face but there is nothing she can do to remove it.

And she goes, she walks to stand before him, close, so close their souls may leap from one to the other, so close she’s inhaling his exhales. 

And he bends his neck, careful as if he’s trying not to startle her, and he kisses her. He begins gently, but she steps even closer into him, opens her mouth under his and tugs hard at his hair.

He groans, and his hold on her arms become bruising, his tongue hot as he licks into her mouth. He grabs her jaw to angle her head for better access, and she whines deep in her throat at what he makes her feel.

His kisses are nothing like the one Ben gave her. That one was tender and sweet. Poe kisses like fire, overwhelming and forceful, so possessive as to be almost painful.

And she loses herself in it. It’s oblivion she can sense, _there_ , just there, just out of reach, and she chases after it, convinced it can be found within his body. His thumb strokes across her nipple, she hadn’t even noticed his hand going underneath her tunic, and she arches sharply against the hard outline of him. 

And she returns to herself, just a little. 

She takes the smallest step back, and pulls her tunic over her head. His eyes go dark, pupils bleeding into iris and no distinction. What he can see of her he can see aided only by firelight and the stars, but it seems enough for him, and the rumble deep in his chest makes her nipples pebble.

“I’ve never...I haven’t done this before.”

It feels important that he should know, that he’s got her honesty if nothing much else.

He draws a shaking breath.

“You are so young,” he rasps and reaches out, the palm of his hand dragging across her chest, calloused and warm, “You are so powerful, and so fierce, that sometimes I forget how young you really are.”

He lets his hand drop, gives her space, gives her an option. 

“If you want to back out, tell me now. While...while I’m able to stop. I would understand, Rey. I really would. You don’t owe me anything.”

That’s not what this is about and she needs to tell him, be as honest as she can with him. He deserves that. He deserves _more_ , but she can’t give him more.

“Doing this… I would be using you, Poe.”

“That’s ok,” he answers and smiles that lopsided smile of his, the one with sadness all around the edges. “I would be using you too.”

So she takes a step into him again, whispers into the shadows of the hollow in his throat.

“Yes. Please. I want to.”

His hands come up, a finger sliding along the violently beating pulse on the side of her neck.

“Just...just let me take the lead,” he rasps, his voice that growl again, the one that shivers up her spine. Makes her pliant, makes her want to bare her jugular to him.

So she does.

“Fuck,” he whispers, and briefly he clenches her neck, takes her pulse in his hand and owns her heartbeats. 

Then he reaches behind her, pulls loose the other two buns, lets her hair fall free down her naked back.

It tickles. 

He runs his fingers down the delicate bird cage of her ribs, carefully hooks his fingers into the waistband of her leggings, bends and slides them over her hips and down her legs. Urges her to step out of pants and boots as one. He rips his own clothes off as a vague afterthought, she hears buttons roll away into the dark, and sinks down on the ground, takes her with him. They stand high on their knees and they kiss, the coarse hair on his chest rubbing against her nipples. He snakes a hand between them, travels down and finds her apex.

Circles, teases.

“This,” he murmurs, “this nub here, you are familiar with it?” And he presses down, just a little, making her twitch into him, chase his hand. The feel of him hot and hard and pulsing against her belly is heady. 

“I… Ah! Yes...not a lot,” she bites out.

He plays with her, pressure and then release, harshness and softness, a finger dipping inside her, curling, testing, stretching, until she can’t stand it anymore. 

“I want you to...I want more. Please, Poe. Now. Please.”

He leans his hot forehead against her shoulder for a second, his beard scratching her collarbone, his teeth scraping her skin.

“Lay back.”

She lays down onto the ground, stretches out, and she can feel the heat from the fire on one side and the heat from _him_ all around her as he follows her, insinuates himself into the cradle of her thighs. He kisses her again, hot, hard, before he speaks with his lips against hers. Drops the words down on her tongue.

“I’ll try to be gentle. I’ll..I’ll try. Take a deep breath for me now.”

Then he takes himself in hand and presses inside her, splits her wide open for him.

It hurts, of course it hurts. But she’s been one with Ben, and one of the things she learnt from Kylo Ren was his ability to lean into pain. He'd spin it around his fingers, channel it and turn into power, pleasure, song. So she does too, and it’s like static along her skin, in her hair.

When he’s finally seated to the hilt she touches his mouth, and she smiles.

“You can...you can move. Move, Poe. I don’t need gentle.”

He looks down into her face, her eyes wide open to him, just once, just for now, and he sees what he needs to see in order to start snapping his hips. 

She keens, and it’s _song_.

And he, he fucks her like he wants to shake atoms of her loose so he can weave them into his own hair. He fucks her like he wants to break her apart, into stardust, so he can swallow her down and hold her inside himself forever.

She holds on to him, and she has never felt anything like this before. This is exactly what she needs, her body singing around the sharp intrusion of him, clutching at him, holding him inside her so tight that his neck cords with the efforts of his thrusts. And then, _there_ , when he angles himself just right, goes as deep as he can go and presses a blunt thumb against her, she’s gone.

A pleasure that creates the most addictive, precious silence. There is no sorrow, no despair here, only white hot oblivion, and she must feel this again, she knows she must. 

It can never be enough.

Her cries travel upwards, cling to the highest branches of the trees, and as soon as he feels her implode he lets himself loose entirely. The noises he makes are those of an animal as he ruts into her so fiercely that she almost slides along the ground. She envelopes him best as she can, wraps arms and legs around him, presses her mouth to his ear and urges him on, _come on Poe, come on, let go, let go, I can feel you, oh I can feel you_ and he bites her shoulder and roars into the night as he spends himself deep inside her.

“Rey,” he whispers into the darkness above her hair, and she can do nothing but hold him tight, pull him down into her and mouth at the pulse fluttering on his throat. Feel her blood and his spend run down the inside of her thighs. 

Afterwards he rests with his cheek against her heart, and she strokes his hair. His is a warm, solid weight atop hers, too heavy really, but she can’t bring herself to move him. It feels good to be held still, good to be pushed into the ground, even though there is no permanence to it.

“I think I used you more,” she whispers sadly.

He doesn’t answer. She hopes he’s asleep.

She, she doesn’t sleep all night.

* * *

He comes to see her off.

“Don’t forget BB,” he smiles, and the little droid rolls past her up the ramp.

She starts.

“I couldn’t…”

“Hey, hey, don’t fret. Shared custody, right?” 

He’s more like the old Poe right now, wide smile and flashing eyes, but she’s seen underneath all that. He is stoic but she can tell that he doesn’t expect to see her or the droid ever again, and his decision to let her take BB-8 anyway hums on the air between them and she can’t bear it.

“Poe…”

He doesn’t let her say anything else. Some of that dominance that had singed her last night now effortlessly silences her with just a gesture of his hand. She simply looks at him instead, and she is so proud of her dry eyes.

Even if they burn.

“See you around,” he smiles, and activates the chute for her, she sees his face disappear just like that, like Ben’s had when she severed their connection on Crait.

As she hurtles herself into the stars she can still feel him deep inside of her.

It feels good.


	2. 2

* * *

**songs for those left behind**

**Chapter 2**

* * *

About one standard year goes by.

She flits. World-hops. The galaxy is vast and varied, and she prefers to drift along the Outer Rim, really as far from the core she can get.

She can’t be still. She just...she _can’t_.

She had thought that she might stay a while on Tatooine, but she feels too at home there. The beautiful aridness and the sand and the rocks and heat…she knows it all so well and she hates it too. She feels foolish for having expected some kind of closure after burying the sabers and taking the Skywalker name.

There is none.

There is just a hole.

It turns out that having a full name does not make her whole. She is still Just Rey, and she does not belong anywhere. She had the Resistance, but now the Resistance is gone, no longer needed. There is peace across the galaxy, but there is no peace in her. She worries away at the hole left by Ben, the damage left by Kylo, and she burrows herself deeper into nothingness.

There is nowhere else to go.

* * *

She works as an onboard ship mechanic. It suits her, because she gets to use her hands and she travels all the time. If she travels she doesn’t stand still and that’s good because if she stands still she _thinks_. 

She takes jobs from ship to ship, never stays overlong long on the same one. Treasures anonymity more than anything. Keeps her head down and her hands busy and her mind blank. 

She should be happier to be exploring. She knows. All her life she’s been dreaming of things other than sand and hardship, but now, with worlds and planets and moons at her fingertips, she can’t take any of it in.

Flying stars and verdant moons and river deltas like arteries from space. Asteroid belts like gleaming stardust from afar, nebulas like undulant, tenuous portals to different universes. 

None of it finds her, stays with her, she knows she will forget it just as soon as she’s travelled past. Somewhere that knowledge hurts her, but she can’t quite find the spot. Not her heart, she’s almost sure of it.

She doesn’t know the name of the planet where Finn finds her, but it’s yet another desert world. She keeps returning to them, even though, really, she wants asperous, lush greenness. She knows she’s denying herself, but maybe that is as it should be.

She’s sitting in a cantina, right up by the bar, three drinks in, when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She shudders it off and spins around, scrappy, fists raised, prepared to throw a punch. Always so ready to defend herself against advances, theft, anything. Nothing’s changed there.

And it’s Finn. He glows, she thinks blearily, hale and hearty and broad of shoulder. A spark in his eye and his smile so wide and warm it hurts.

She can feel herself growing smaller.

“Rey!” he says and moves in to hug her. Strong arms and a large chest against her cheek but she thinks of someone else, not him. And if he notices that she doesn’t quite lift her arms to hug him back he makes no mention of it. 

He slides onto the stool next to her, orders a drink. Takes a moment to tap BB gently upside the head in greeting, then gives her his full attention.

She doesn’t want it.

“We came back to Ajan Kloss. Thought you’d still be there. You said you wanted to meditate, centre...I thought you’d wait. But you didn’t.”

She can feel the way he’s looking at her. Tatty clothes. Hair hanging loose and far too long down her back, snarled curls. The way she moves, even when sitting still. She knows she is jerky and sharp, cautious, even here, now, with him.

An old friend. Her best friend.

“I did stay behind for a while. So did...so did Poe. Eventually we went our separate ways.”

There is so much more between the letters and words she just uttered, all those negative spaces making up an enormous thing, an emotion she can’t handle. BB chirps beside her, its metal components somehow managing to convey more than she ever could. At least not right now. 

And she doesn’t want to think about Poe right here with Finn. Late at night, when she closes her eyes, she can still conjure the feeling of him deep inside of her. Can still remember what that particular oblivion had tasted like. What he had felt like melded to her. She keeps those memories safe in her pocket, golden coins, takes them out only when no one can see. 

“Have you seen him?” she asks even though she shouldn’t. “Is he well?”

Finn looks thoughtful, distracted, but he nods.

“I see him every now and then. Bit of a nomad. And he’s a little hazy on the details, but I think he’s back to running spice.”

“I see,” she says and thinks not of what Poe is now, but of his hand over her throat, on her breasts, his tongue in her mouth and the fire in his eyes and how she can’t forget any of it.

Finn studies her with his head at a tilt and a frown that tells her that he knows damn well that she’s withholding something. A lot.

But he lets it go.

“What have you been doing since, Rey?” he asks instead, eyes intent. “Where have you been going? We tried to track transponder codes, chase sightings of the Falcon, you, anything. But nothing.”

No wonder. She’d docked the Falcon in a remote shipping yard almost immediately after leaving Poe behind on the jungle planet. She’d powered down all the systems, and she’d told herself the old ship would be safe. That she would be back for it. 

Then she’d hitched out of there 

“I’ve been around,” she says. “Just…around.”

He stays silent, expecting more, at ease with saying nothing while her skin itches with how he is waiting her out.

“I take odd jobs. Mostly as a mechanic. I’m... I’m good at that, aren’t I? I try to stay further out. Travel around. It’s not…I’m not..” she stops herself, frustrated with not finding the words, with not wanting to find them. “I get by,” she finishes lamely. “I do.”

Finn shakes his head.

“So you’re not…you know, Rey, you have all this power. Immense. The things you can do. The good you can do. The galaxy is still trying to heal. There are wounds everywhere, lingering hardship. You could do so much to help.”

She rubs her arms, wonders when she became so fractured, so unable to stay in place, keep the pieces of herself together. Then she wonders why she wonders. Because of course she knows.

She can heal nothing.

“You have no right,” she whispers. “No right to expect anything from me. No one has.”

Finn sighs. 

“No. Perhaps not,” he says, but she can hear how he doesn’t quite mean it, disappointment a tangible thing on the air between them. It makes her skin crawl a little, makes her want to lash out.

“And you, Finn? What are you doing? How are you helping the galaxy heal?” 

“I do what I can, Rey. _All_ of us do.”

It shouldn’t, but this confirmation that he’s _part_ of something, that he’s not alone, it hurts. No matter that she’s chosen solitude, to go back from whence she came. No matter that of course she had known that Finn would hardly rest on his laurels, that he is goodness and light and that he would use all that to make a difference. No matter.

“That’s great, Finn. It really is. I’m happy for you.”

Finn says nothing to that, just fidgets next to her, and she can’t stand the way he’s looking at her, the pity and the worry. She drinks deeply, considers ordering another drink. Is just about to signal the Weequay tending bar when Finn speaks again.

“It hurt you more than we...than _I_ realised, didn’t it?” he says. “Whatever was between you and... _him_. Ren.” He reaches out with a hand, slowly, as she’s an animal not to be spooked, and even though she flinches he taps a finger gently between her eyes. “Here. I feel it here.” And he moves his hand downwards, a quick second of a touch between her breasts. “And here.”

“Yes,” she says plainly, and then suddenly more than she had intended bubbles out. “Yes. I was dead, Finn. I was dead. I was _dead_ and I was _gone_ and what I _saw_ …” She breaks off, unable to articulate just what it had been like to die, to go _beyond_ and then return. “Then Ben gave his life to bring me back and...and it broke away a large piece of me, and I don’t know if I’ll ever recover it. I don’t know if I’ll ever _recover_. There’s a wound where he used to be, Finn, where Ben used to be, and I don’t know that anything can ever fill it. I...I don’t think it can happen.”

Even as she speaks she is aware of how monotonous her voice is, how dead. 

“There are echoes. I can’t drown them out.”

Finn’s beautiful eyes are blank and wet, she sees how they are about to brim over. That empathy of his, she thinks, how beautiful it is, how wretched.

She doesn’t want it.

“I...we shouldn’t have left you there. Shouldn’t have left you behind. But you promised you were fine and I…” He stops, closes his eyes. Looks pained. “I shouldn’t have believed you, should I?”

She smiles with her mouth and she thinks that it will rip her face, this face of hers, just turn it into just a gaping wound with teeth.

And Finn senses some of it, of course he does, and his eyes darken with worry.

“But you’ll come with us now, won’t you?”

”No,” she says gently. “Maybe one day. But not now. Not yet, Finn. I can’t.”

He wants to protest, she can tell, but he stays silent. Seems to understand that right now the only thing she is capable of is drifting without aim. That only by floating far away can she avoid bumping into things that hurt: reminders, memories.

“Rey,” he says, and he takes her hand even though she doesn’t want him to. “Rey. Promise me that you will come find us. As soon as you are able.”

“I promise,” she says even though she doesn’t know if she can ever fulfill it.

She decides against another drink. 

Outside she hugs Finn hard, far too hard, but she is glad to see him go. 

Only later does she think to wonder how he found her.

* * *

She’s waiting to ship out from Kafrene when she runs into Poe again.

She’s signed up as a second mechanic on an rusty old repurposed frigate, headed back out to the Outer Rim with mining parts. She’s relieved. She’s uneasy this close to the Core, wants to return to the hinterlands and the desolation. She feels almost peaceful in transit, when floating in the darkness far away from worlds and planets and moons, getting her hands dirty and, letting her mind go blank.

Kafrene is not peaceful. It’s overbearing, verging on threatening, always making shadows slither on the outskirts of her senses. It’s a place she must too regularly visit to secure work, but she would avoid it entirely if there was a choice. Rugged and ugly and busy, so bustling that walking the streets gives her a headache. Too many impressions, too many emotions, too much crime tickling the edges of her mind. Buildings and happenings upside down high above her head. All _around._

Colours and smells and darkness. Nowhere to truly hide, no way to track it all. 

Exhausting.

And she feels vulnerable right now, exposed, walking a shortcut she’s never tried before, an impulse she might regret. But she’s hungry. She’s out to buy some food, enough for dinner and breakfast, and then she’ll retreat back to her hired room down by the docking bays. Wait out the night, then ship out. 

With any luck it’ll be some time before she has to return to Kafrene,

And the bustling food market is just in the next section along, she can hear the shouts of the vendors from here, fancies she can already smell the aromas of the multitude of galactic cuisines on offer. Her steps lengthen, her chin comes up just a little. Her existence is spartan, simple, perhaps dreary, but she will not deny herself food. She delights in different flavours and textures, is adventurous and experimental in what she chooses to eat. Never again will she go hungry, be denied, subsist on rations. 

That much, at least, she is settled in. That much she can give herself.

They might have missed each other, walking on opposite sides of the walkway, so many people between. 

She anonymous, in a grey cloak with the hood drawn deep over her face, willing any attention to bounce off her. 

He with his gaze fastened dead ahead, intent only on where it is he’s going. 

But something makes her turn her head and see him framed by the edges of her hood. She starts, stops, grows hot and cold. 

Considers lowering her head again and keep walking before he can see.

But then the round droid by her side shrieks with excitement and barrels across the narrow alleyway, right between the legs of the people and beings in its way, curses flying in the air above his round head. And when she looks up she sees Poe Dameron sink into a crouch in front of the small droid, a wide smile on his face, yes, she can see how it even reaches his eyes as he strokes the chattering BB-8 on its domed head.

She follows the path of the droid to reach him, blind to the throng of bodies, to the toes she’s stepping on. Heedless to anything but him, now when it’s too late anyway. It’s an instinctive thing, a pull, because had she stopped to consider she might have quietly turned and slipped away before he could talk to her.

When she’s very near him she stops, and she…she can’t stop looking.

She had thought him hardened on Ajan Kloss, but that was nothing compared to what he is now. Eyes of granite, heart of flint, she thinks as she watches him stand back up again to meet her, every line of him sketched hard and sure.

There’s so much grey on him now, wild streaks of silver merging with his curls, and she knows it’s not so much from aging as from _life_. His mouth is made out of angular lines underneath the stubble, cheekbones and jawline sharp etchings onto the canvas of his face.

And his eyes… she avoids them and wonders what he can see in hers.

He’s dressed simply, trousers and shirt, boots and a jacket over it all. She sees weapons on him, a blaster on his hip, the edge of a dagger poking out of a boot shaft.

“I was just going for something to eat,” she tells him, voice rusty from disuse, and he nods and touches a hand to her lower back. She shivers at the contact, hopes he won’t notice. He urges her on, then easily slides into step with her. 

Just like that.

“I’m hungry too.”

They weave through the crowds of people, BB-8 rolling by their side, chirping and beeping, seemingly unaware or uncaring of the silence of his companions. Occasionally Poe will acknowledge some of the droid’s chatter with monosyllabic utterings and a hint of a smile over his upturned collar, otherwise they say nothing as they go. It’s too loud anyway, that constant cacophony of voices and clangs and _life_ of the trading outpost.

They reach the market still without talking, and though Rey has been here before she takes it in again, still overwhelmed by the noise and the smells and the sheer _choice_ of food on offer. He leans down, his lips close to her ear so that she can hear him in the din.

“What do you want?”

“I don’t…I’m not sure. I always try and get something I’ve never had before,” she explains, and he nods once, then keeps her moving. His is a steadying, disconcerting presence as he leads her deeper into the market.

She turns to him.

“Poe, I…”

He silences her easily, just a jerk of his head and she stops talking. She wonders at this new strength of him, this new hardness. He was never weak, but now…There is a simmering, oppressive dominance and a quiet surety. Less impatience. Where has he been, what has he been doing since she saw him last?

It might be better anyway, that they don’t talk . She’s got no idea what she would say, how she could ever accurately explain.

“We’ll talk later,” he tells her, and moves down a row of stalls, seeming to look for something specific, ignoring the shouts of the vendors, their attempts to entice him to their wares. She tries to shut it all out and concentrate only on him, but finds it as hard as always.

It’s been a long time since she was centered.

Eventually he stops by a small stall at the very back, manned by a wizened woman, stooped and frail. He nods at her, hands over some credits, and gets a bag of food in return. He turns back to Rey.

“I’m staying close to here,” and his hand is on her lower back again, guiding her out of the market and back onto the street, BB by their side. They stay silent as they go, but her mind is loud. She thinks of what happened on Ajan Kloss, she thinks of how deftly he strummed her body and made her feel. Made her forget _…everything_ , even if not for long. It had been worth a lot, such a _lot_ , and her skin hums and sings with the memory.

Poe moves closer to her then, his shoulder touching hers, a flash of warmth, and she wonders if he’s somehow picking up on what she’s thinking, feeling. He’s not looking at her though, is focused only on navigating the narrow, crammed walkways, leading her further into the grubby section and down back alleys until they reach a small building. Garish neon proclaims it bar and lodgings. 

Poe’s smile is barely a twitch as he looks at her.

“Home for the moment,” he says, and opens the door.

The noise inside is worse than outside. It’s several different kinds of music and raised voices and laughter and clinks of glasses. Raucous. Overbearing. The heat is crippling, and so are the smells. This is exactly why Rey can’t stand Kafrene or places like it, prefers the solitude of the Outer Rim. Poe seems to sense her disquiet, quickly leading her through the throng. He nods hello to several people and beings on his way, before reaching the back, ushering her down a hallway behind the bar. He cards open a door and gestures her and BB inside.

It's a small, utilitarian stop-over room. A bed, a table, not even fancy enough for durasteel. There’s a door she supposes leads to a fresher, no doubt dingy and old. No windows, and clearly Poe is not intending to stay long enough to waste any time softening up the place with personality. There are some clothes thrown over one of the chairs, a few pieces of a fruit she can’t name on the table.

That’s it.

“Sit down,” he says, and she removes her cloak, then takes one of the two chairs as he rummages around in the bag from the market and comes out with a bowl each. He places one in front of her with a plastic spoon, takes the other one and sits on the bed. She’s grateful for the distance, the slight chance to pull herself close, hold on to emotions and a fight or flight instinct that is near crippling.

“You can power down, little buddy,” he tells BB-8, and the droid rolls into a corner and goes into silent repose. “It’s a stew from Mandalore,” he says to Rey and takes a spoonful, chews and swallows and she can’t take her eyes off the way his throat moves. “It’s one of my favourites.” He nods at her. “Go on. Try it.”

So she takes a mouthful with the plastic spoon, and near chokes on the heat. Poe’s mouth twitches again. For a sharp moment she sees the old Poe, humour and impudence flickering across his face like a spectre from the past.

“Give it a moment. Other flavours will begin to come through.”

So she does, and after a few seconds the heat gives way to a smoky complexity, deep nuances and exotic flavours she’s never come across before. She eats more, they both do, and she wonders if he’s doing this to give her time to collect herself, get used to his presence, to having to interact with an old…friend. He is a friend, isn’t he? She thinks so. He is. One offering her a kindness right now that she’s not entirely sure she deserves. By habit she probes the hole left by Ben, ragged and painful and comforting, and wonders how to act, how to react. She thinks again of the way Poe had briefly made her forget the very existence of that void, and she runs her eyes over his profile, proud and keen. She wonders at the way they just struck up company after such a long time apart, after never really getting on, after what happened.

She finishes her stew first, a fast eater by a habit so ingrained in her as to be permanent, still not entirely sure that food won’t suddenly be taken away. Disappear. When she puts her spoon down Poe stops eating too, pushes his bowl away and looks at her properly for the first time since they ran into each other out on the street. She tamps down the urge to fidget, and wonders what it is he sees. It’s hard for her to know; she hasn’t looked in a mirror for a long time.

She surprises herself by speaking first.

“BB,” she begins, then glances over to the corner to make sure the little droid still is powered down, “-I want you to have him again. He’s yours, isn’t he. He’s been great company, but he belongs to you.”

When she senses that Poe is about to protest she holds up a hand.

“Shared custody, remember?” she says and tries to recall how to smile.

Poe doesn’t acknowledge, shows neither dissent nor assent. But he doesn’t look happy. He looks… 

She feels the need to fill the silence.

“I bumped into Finn. Back on…” she stops herself because she still isn’t sure just where it was she met him. She can remember the bitter heat of the cheap drink, she can remember Finn’s eyes, but she can’t remember where she was. “...a while back,” she finishes lamely. “I saw him a while back.”

Poe nods, just a little.

“I see him every now and then,” he says. “Last time he mentioned that you met. That you still didn’t want to come with him. Them. ”

She imagines she hears censure in Poe’s voice, but it’s slight. He’s keeping his face blank, eyes unreadable. Calm and stoic, and she could almost miss his old impatience and recklessness, how he would never be still.

And she notes how he doesn’t include himself in Finn’s group, and she deflects.

“You are on your own too.”

He nods.

“I am.”

“You never…” she begins, shakes her head in frustration, doesn’t quite know where this particular kind of sadness comes from. “You never used to be like this. You were hotheaded, audacious. Annoying. _Bright._ Now you’re...not,” she finishes quietly, realising that she’s twining her long hair. 

His eyes are on her fingers, on the strands she’s coiling tightly around them.

“War changes people, Rey. As do death. As do life. Who knows that better than you?”

And he gives her a look that makes her flush. There is remembrance in his eyes, an odd heat, and she shifts a little on her chair, suddenly restless and heavy at the same time.

Echoes and phantom sensations. She is sure she can feel his mouth on her breast. Feel the warmth of him, the solidness.

Their eyes meet. He’s steady, immovable, but she’s having to force herself to not look away.

“What do you want, Rey?”

“I want…” she starts, and then stops herself because how can she articulate? She doesn’t even know, so how then can she dress it in words? How can she shape them and force them to obey, when they grow so cumbersome and heavy on her tongue?

She knowswhat she wants right _now,_ of course. She wants him to rule her body. She wants him to make her feel what she felt when he thrusted her into the ground where the Resistance had celebrated victory. She wants him to take her over, and force the evanescent erasure of all the snarled things, the knots tangled with absences and holes. He did it once, she knows he could do it again. Just one more taste of subliminal limbo. 

One. 

And if he did, then she feels sure she could go on a little while longer. 

It’s why she accompanied him to this cramped, naked little room after all, and she feels sure he knows it too. Not to catch up. Not to ask questions. Because she doesn’t want to know where he’s been, what he’s been doing. She doesn’t want him to know about her. Such knowledge would be too intimate, forge a connection she can’t bear. She just wants him to pierce her, go deep, touch something inside that induces silence. She only wants here and now.

Then she will leave.

“I think about that night a lot,” she says. “The last night on Ajan Kloss. How you made me feel and I...”

His hands twitch like he wants to touch her. She wonders if the touch would be soft or hard. She would welcome harshness right about now. 

“I want to feel it again,” she says, trying to convey without dressing it in complicated words. “ _Poe._ ”

His face is inscrutable, blank, but there is a flare in his dark eyes, sprites dancing; a challenge perhaps. He’s too still though, straight backed on the bed, strong arms crossed over broad chest. Making no move, giving her nothing to grasp. Not even an answer spoken out loud.

She stands from the chair and takes the few short steps needed to settle herself between his slightly spread legs. She feels that instinct again, in the light of his flashfire eyes, to be yielding. Give up power so that he take. So she sinks down onto her knees, resting her hands on his thighs. Looking up at him, and she can see how his pulse beats faster, shivers in the hollow of his throat. Thin skin fluttering like moth wings and she can’t quite articulate the knowledge, but she knows her subservience is arousing to him.

He lets his arms fall away, and that is permission of sorts.

Slowly she runs her hands up his thighs, feels his muscles cord and tense underneath her palms, the worn material of his pants rough in between. She slides upwards, up his hips, to where his shirt is carelessly tucked into the belted waistband. Slowly she pulls it out enough that she can slide her hands underneath it and up over his abdominals. Put her hands straight on him. His skin is warm, hot even, and when she travels further up his heart beats steady against her palm. She cups her hand against the heartbeats, like she wants to enclose them, hold them and feel them against her lifeline beyond what will happen here.

Then her hands keep moving. Softly, just a brush of her fingertips. Barely there. Pectorals. Nipples, feather light, just skirting around. His eyes go half lidded with that, heavy, long eyelashes throwing shadows across his cheekbones. His hands are still by his sides though, no move to touch her.

Up. Trapezius, collarbone, with a slight scratch of her nails and he shifts his hips, a restless, lazy sort of movement that she thinks she will always remember. A muscle jumps on his jaw, tense and ready to spring and his eyes…

She has to avert her own.

She runs her hand to his back. His body is strong, darkly alive. So many plains to him, hard angles she could never have guessed at, some softness where she expected to find none. A story contained for now, following unexpected roads, itching to burst outside its borders. Perhaps jump from him to her. She must be careful of that, because she wants none of his writing on her skin. She does not want to take pieces of him away with her, no fragmentary sentences and paragraphs, words chopped at the beginning and at the end. 

She follows the smooth canyon of his spine, up and down, feels his muscles move and roil under her touch. So much warm skin, it never ends. Right now she doesn’t want it to end, even though she knows that she herself will make it something finite.

It’s when her hands move back around and touch down on his gun belt that he finally moves. Springs into action faster than she can quite comprehend and grabs her hands in his, stops her attempt to unbuckle him. He stands and moves forward in one fluid motion, takes her with him, and as she hits the wall behind her she is once again struck with how easily he overpowers her when it’s down to just body strength.

She hasn’t used the Force in a long while.

He comes after her, presses the length of his body along hers, forces her to feel nothing but him. He spreads her legs with a thick thigh, and she grinds down on it, groans low in her throat at the friction. She struggles to touch him, wants her flat open palms to engulf as much of his skin as possible.

Remember.

Remember what he feels like, the warmth and the aliveness, when she is gone from here.

But he won’t allow her any more free rein, seems determined to take over now. He’s got her by her wrists, and he presses them back into the wall behind, holds them firm there with one hand so that he can grab at her rear with the other. Push her hips forward into his, so that she can feel how hot and how hard he is against her. Impossibly hard. Robbed of the use of her hands she nuzzles against his cheek, tries to find his lips with hers, but he denies her. Sucks on her pulse instead, hard, then a scrape of teeth and she knows a dark mark will unfurl like a flower on her throat.

Again, near madness with restive need curled low in her belly, she tries to free her hands. He slams them back into the wall in admonishment, just on the wrong side of painful. Forces her to obey and stay still for him and she whines with need.

She manages to get his attention though, tips her head away from him until he meets her eyes. His are blown, eclipses bleeding into dark brown, and she could get lost in them if she isn't careful, she really could.

“This time you don’t have to try and be gentle,” she tells him, and that is a rumble deep in his chest, turning into a growl as he starts nipping along her jaw, the tip of her ear, as his grip on her wrists leaves bruises that she will treasure.

“Have you had anyone since me?” he mutters against her throat, as he drags his free hand up her side, underneath her tunic and starts loosening her breast band. Enough that he can slip a calloused finger inside and graze her nipple. She would arch into him at the live wire sensation, but he holds her too hard,

“No.” She’s dizzy with want, with the smell of him. “I’ve tried, but I…”

 _I couldn’t_ she whispers in her head but of course he can’t hear her, won’t ever be able to talk to her like that and she could almost hate him for it. She tries to entreat him out loud instead, tries to get him to just ruin her, lay waste to her, _fuck_ her. So that she can leave before he works his way underneath her skin.

So she doesn’t watch her tongue, she allows words spill without a care. 

“Please, Poe. Please just make me forget. Make it go quiet inside.”

He stills then, and she could cry with it, the frustration. The frustration that turns to fear when he pushes away from her a little, let his hand fall out of her top. His grip on her wrists remain though, and his eyes are hard as he looks down in her face.

“Why do you want this so much? With me? You...I...you don’t…”

 _You don’t care for me_ is what he doesn’t say, but she still hears it clear as day, and her sadness for his sake forces honesty out of her once more.

“I have to feel you, _something,_ inside me. I need…” her voice is a whine now, desperation, sorrow, _need_ , and she loses the ability to articulate.

No matter. He still understands. Too well.

“You can never have him back inside you. So you are trying to fill the emptiness, replace the feeling with something else. _Fucking._ ”

She would recoil at the vehemence and hurt in his voice but she’s got nowhere to go, he’s all over her and all she can feel and breathe is him.

“You said it was fine that I used you. You _said_ that.”

“That was then,” he grinds out, voice toneless now but eyes like obsidian fire. She can feel the distance growing between them, can feel the void as something real, palpable. “Not anymore.” Then, quietly, mercilessly: “I missed you.”

_Oh Poe._

She tries to hold him to her, tries to sink into the solidness of him, tries to make him _understand._

“I always see him.” she stutters, gasps. “He’s always there in the corner of my eye. And the noises and the whispers from beyond, and the hole inside me, the...I….”

She breaks off, unable to breathe right anymore. Hyperventilating, terror and panic casting shadows across the room, blood taste in her mouth.

_Please, Poe. Please understand._

“No,” he says. “ _No_.”

He takes a deep breath, and it looks like it costs him, like forcing himself to calm down chisels pieces out of him.

They join with the pieces of her spread all over the floor.

Then he begins stroking her cheek, her hair, her neck. Behind her ear. Her forehead. Over and over, softly, the calluses on his hands writing on her skin. Hums something too low for her to hear, but his chest vibrates with it. Until her breathing gentles again, until her teeth unclenches. Until her eyes flutter closed and she wants to rest her cheek on his heart.

Then he steps back, and when he doesn’t touch her anymore she has to lock her knees to stay upright.

“This room is paid for for a couple of days more. Stay as long as you need.”

And he pushes back from her and he leaves, and she has never felt so empty.

He wasn't supposed to leave first.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> My first rodeo for this ship. Please let me know what you think?


End file.
